


Swan Song

by AvaCelt



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: AU ending, Abusive Relationships, Angst with a Happy Ending, Body Horror, Canon up until the veeeery beginning of the Dark Continent Arc, F/M, Gen, Graphic Description, M/M, Neglect, Toxic Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-23
Updated: 2019-04-23
Packaged: 2020-01-24 09:44:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18568840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AvaCelt/pseuds/AvaCelt
Summary: Ging Freecs returns to Whale Island after his seven-year round-trip to the Dark Continent- but not alone. When Gon learns that his father intends to marry Pariston Hill at the family home, he wonders if he's still floating in a coma, detached from reality but still very much alive. It's a family reunion from Hell, but it's a reunion nonetheless. Friends and enemies alike gather on the tiny island for the wedding, forcing father and son to address the choices that led them to this moment, the broken relationships they left unhealed, and the individual hatred that neither could touch upon until it was too late.





	Swan Song

**Author's Note:**

> Paragraphs blocked in italics are flashbacks. 
> 
> The majority of the story is told over one day. I don't really dabble in this genre, but I wanted to try it out for this fic. Turns out, every year of my Big Bang is essentially an experimentation of a new writing style lol. Hope you guys like it!
> 
> And last but not least- Happy HxH Big Bang 2019, y'all!

It's Ikalgo who tells him that his father's returned from the Dark Continent. Not in person, of course, because Ikalgo's a thousand miles away, but his friend still finds time in his busy schedule to let Gon know that the man he once spent months chasing is finally back on familiar shores. Initially, Gon thinks that the forty-one year old man is back in one of the bigger cities, maybe back at the Hunter Association headquarters where his frenemies and paperwork are waiting for him, but when his aunt calls him late one evening telling him to catch the next ship back to Whale Island without any explanation as to why, Gon knows.

The chicken had finally come home to roost.

* * *

 

His aunt isn't there to receive him at the docks when his ship finally anchors in the wee hours of the morning. Instead, it's Morel and Bisky. They're in high spirits, waving Gon down to earth.

“You look just like your aunty,” Bisky snickers. She still looks the same, thanks to her magic.

“You've grown,” Morel nods proudly. Gon's up to Morel's chest now, better than when he was twelve and could barely reach over a hotel's reception desk.

He's turning twenty in three months time. Standing at a clean six feet, Gon's as willowy as Mito, lean around the shoulders, wide around the hips, and quick and calculating on his feet. Back when he first returned home after his journey to find Ging and earn his Hunter license concluded, he thought about where his life would take him next. He didn't know much of anything besides what he'd learned on the road, so he stayed home and worked the farm, helped his aunt and grandmother with the house, and wrote down all the things he could do while his friends were off accomplishing their own dreams on different corners of the planet. He'd made a deal, after all. No power for a creature as small as him, not a creature that was willing to kill to get even. No power meant no purpose, and slowly, Gon had to relearn his purpose in life.

Gon didn't have any dreams then, and even now when he's almost twenty and working as a rare videogame hunter, he often wonders how long he'll last in this business before his whims fail him and he ends up at the World Tree again. There's peace in staring out into the distant horizon. Rarely are there any answers, but Gon tries.

“We better get going,” Bisky chirped, clicking her heels. “We only have a week before the ceremony!”

Gon's mouth stretches into a wide smile, but deep down, he wonders what kind of woman his father's brought home. He wonders if it's his birth mother. Never once in his life did he think a one-legged Pariston Hill would be the man opposite his father at the altar.

* * *

“Why here?” Gon inquires politely as they take the long way back to the house, stopping for breakfast along the way.

“Pariston doesn't have any family,” Morel says, nursing his steaming cup of coffee. “I don't think he really has friends either,” he admits sheepishly.

“When did you guys get here?”

“Yesterday,” Bisky hums as she skins her grapes before plopping them into her mouth. “Ging called me last week, said he was getting married. I laughed at the bastard, then asked him why anyone would marry a cheapskate like him, and he told me he wasn't cheap, just wallet-conscious. Then he told me to spread the news that the wedding was in two weeks on Whale Island. Then the bastard hung up on me!”

Morel nods while Gon blinks. “So he just told you to tell everyone else?”

Bisky beams. “Yup!”

Gon wonders why his aunt would allow something like that. It makes sense now why she didn't say anything about the wedding or Ging returning to the island, just that Gon's presence was requested. Years ago, it would have been sheer pettiness on her part. Now he wonders if she knows more than she's letting on, that she would rather say it to his face than gruffly give him the information on the telephone.

Mito Freecss could be cold when she wanted to, but Gon knows she loves him. He gives his mentors another bright smile and drinks his orange juice quietly, letting them chatter on about all the people they've told about the auspicious event.

“I mayyyy have let it slip to Hisoka as well,” Bisky admits after her third coffee. “So don't be surprised if you see him lurking in the trees.”

“When did you see Hisoka?” Gon asks curiously. He counts two years since he last laid eyes on the clown, and even then, it was in a restaurant bar where the clown was drinking mojitos and eying a jewel thief while Gon, Ikalgo, and Palm took a table farthest from the pale creature and his prey.

“She's sleeping with Hisoka,” Morel guffaws. “Everyone knows about it!”

Except Gon of course. He blinks twice and cocks his head to the size. “Oh?”

Bisky boxes Morel's ears in a sharp second before turning her nose up. “We're _lovers._ And yes.”

Gon thinks it's hilarious, but he's happy for his teacher. “That's great, Bisky. I'm glad you guys are having fun.” Bisky gives him a coy smile, and he knows he's said the right thing. He still can't read a room to save his life, but he can still read people.

“Killua will be here tomorrow,” Morel laughs. “I haven't seen that kid in years, but they say he's as tall his father.”

“And just as big,” Bisky adds with distaste. “So not _cute_.”

“Killua's coming?”

“Of course,” Bisky huffs. “Wouldn't be an elite Hunter wedding without a Zoldyck somewhere in attendance. The more people witness Ging and Pariston's hellish union, the merrier. Maybe it'll speed up the divorce.”

“You didn't invite his brother, did you?” Gon asks carefully.

“No,” Bisky and Morel say in unison.

Gon breathes a sigh of relief and takes a bite of his pastry before continuing. “I don't want any damage on the property.”

“We don't either.” Morel smirks while brandishing his Hunter card. “The Association's hired ten of the best security hunters to guard your family and the house. If there's any hint of danger, they have orders to bring the fight to the water... my domain.”

“I also brought a gun,” Bisky adds.

The comment sets of a fit of hearty laughter. Gon finds himself talking to his teachers about the plans for the week, their friends enroute to the island, and all the other little things that Gon knows bring joy to his heart.

Deeper into the island, tucked away in his old room now furnished to fit two adult men instead of one rowdy child, Ging Freecss lies awake next to a snoring blonde.

* * *

_Ging promised his cousin money. When he and Pariston climbed out of their submarine and stepped foot on human land for the first time in almost ten years, the shorter of the two trekked over to a telephone booth next to an alehouse. After years of eating rations and unknown fauna and flora from the Dark Continent, one would think the little man would find himself and his man some real food and water, maybe a warm bed after years of sleeping on hard surfaces and underneath shivering trees. Instead, the bearded man with the drawn cheeks and rail-thin wrists dialed a house on Whale Island._

“ _Hello? Is that you, Gon?”_

“ _I'll give you 500,000 jenny if you let me hold my wedding at the house,” he said gruffly._

_The voice on the other line went silent for several seconds before speaking again. “Do you think this is a joke?”_

“ _Do I sound like I'm joking?” He snapped back._

“ _Didn't you go there to die?” She asked smoothly. “How did you find a lover instead? Did you find her in a fighting pit like you did the last one?”_

“ _800,000,” he drawled, eyes drifting up towards the peeling ceiling of the phone booth. “Double that if you let me hold the reception there too.”_

“ _No.”_

“ _He's a cripple and he has no family; I'm not doing this for me,” he whispered, even though there was no reason to._

“ _Everything you've ever done, you've done for yourself,” she bit back coldly, “and if this man still wants to marry you, then it's his funeral.”_

_Ging stilled. “Four million, and we get to stay in my old room. We leave two days after the ceremony and reception.”_

“ _For good, this time.”_

“ _... for good, this time.”_

* * *

Gon senses Killua even though he's on the mainland, not yet nestled into the boat that will bring him to Whale Island. Maybe if they were still in contact, Killua would take the nightship instead of the early morning one that would bring with it merchants, fishermen, and families that had gone to the mainland to sight-see.

He wonders if his old friend will bring new friends.

“We should head to the house,” Bisky says briskly before giving Gon a knowing look. “Unless you want to keep stalling.”

Morel coughs into his hand. “You know, it's just a wedding. Marriages don't last long these days anyway. If anything, he'll leave Pariston within the month, and Pariston's lawyer will file for an annulment.”

“I'm not stalling,” Gon says politely, but he knows he is, he can feel the repulsion. It's not disgust, and not exactly the pulsing malice of killer intent. No- Gon simply didn't think he'd have to factor his father back into his life after he'd told Gon that he was off to live out his dream. Whale Island had never been Ging Freecss's dream, so for Gon, the preparations for the wedding are more like a fever dream than anything else.

“Aren't you curious about why your aunty's letting the bastard host the wedding here?” Bisky asks airily, her hands tucked primly underneath her chin.

“Maybe,” he tells her. He's slightly curious- not too curious because Mito and Ging's answers won't change anything.

“Well, **I** think you should just ask the source,” Morel claims, slapping a few bills on the table. “The longer we're here, the more we'll find something different to talk about. You can't trust Hunters gathered around good food. We'll be here until tomorrow!”

Tomorrow, Killua would be here.

“OK, let's go.”

Gon says it as blandly as he can, so that the rustling of chairs and the steady stream of people walking out of the small diner come off as mundane as possible. When he'd first left Whale Island, he'd been a child on a mission to learn about the world. Now, his situation is commonplace, merely a man that prefers the mainland to the island. Many more had left like Gon, maybe not at Ging and his age, but they'd left eventually. In a way, Gon knows the island needs it. It can't sustain too many people, so when the families get bigger, the children get more restless. Gon knows the feeling- the feeling that the ships are so much more than just that. Deep down, Gon sees them as a gateway for hopes and dreams reaching far beyond Whale Island's simple farms and fisheries- sooner or later, that's what all the ships become.

And long ago, those dreams led Gon to Killua- the same Killua he hasn't seen in seven years.

* * *

“ _Haven't you had enough of videogames?” Leorio's words were laced with judgment and concern, a combination that worked with him and only him._

“ _Nope,” Gon hummed, the beer dark and cold in his mug._

“ _You could always go to school.”_

“ _And study what?”_

“ _Art! Music! How to not waste your life away in front of a computer!”_

“ _I said videogame_ _ **hunter**_ _, Leorio, not videogame_ _ **player**_ _.”_

“ _But what's the point of hunting something and not experiencing it after you've captured it?”_

“ _No point at all,” Gon said thoughtfully. “There's no point at all.”_

* * *

“Good morning,” says the little old lady, breaking Ging out of his reverie.

“Morning,” he replies softly.

“Hill-san?” She asks inquisitively, laying the steaming bread on the long dining table.

“Asleep.”

“Hmm.”

“... I do love him,” he mumbles to the old woman who's raised him since his own mother died and his father disappeared.

“I never asked.”

“But you should,” Ging tells her, rubbing his tired eyes while his nerves continue to buzz with Gon's arrival. “You should ask; you have the right to know.”

“What good would of come of it?”

“No good,” Ging sighs. “Just the truth.”

* * *

Mito meets them on the road heading towards the house, but she's walking away, a basket of plant bulbs nuzzled into the crook of her arm.

“Mito-san!” Morel waves, and he's blushing, because why wouldn't he? At thirty-seven, she's one of the most beautiful women on the island, single, and as devoted a woman as there would ever be.

But she's also Gon's aunt and she'd instructed Gon to come home. Nine years ago, when he'd first started his journey to earn his Hunter license, she stayed in the peripherals of his life. It was his time to find himself, as his father before him, and all the other men and women who'd left Whale Island to make their own way in this world. She'd cried when she sent him off, but when he returned, it was to open arms and pride beyond comprehension as he'd done what Ging hadn't – returned home as he'd promised.

Now, he's twenty, a frequent visitor of his homeland, as dutiful as he can be to the women who raised him when they could have passed him off to his father. Now, Mito meets him when she can because she knows he'll come home, do as he's instructed because that's their silent promise- that they'll always meet each other halfway in whatever decision they wanted to make next.

“Hello,” she says politely to his teachers. “Gon,” she nods, at last. Her red hair is longer now, still slicked back with a touch of pomade.

“Mito-san,” he beams, and he hugs her because he's eleven again. She pats his shoulder and lets him soak in the warmth. Something thaws inside of him, a darkness he knows lives deep beneath his chest, one that he acknowledges every once in a while.

She coughs politely and he lets go. She gives him a placid smile before addressing his teachers. “My grandmother has prepared breakfast. Please help yourselves.”

And with that, she's off to her destination, leaving Gon behind to face his father all on his own.

* * *

“ _It's what you wanted,” Kurapika told him softly, his fingers caressing the gold pedant in the shape of a dagger. “For everyone, getting their Hunter license was a means to an end. Your father was your purpose, and you found him; you understood why he did what he did. It's what you wanted. It's what you have to accept, now that it's over. You can follow him to the Dark Continent if you want, but why? You can't use use your nen for anything more than the basics. More than that, you already know why he left, and that he's not coming back, not if he finds a lifetime worth of adventures. It's what you wanted, Gon- isn't it? Didn't you want to understand why he chose the life of a nomad? This is why. He wants to be free, and he can't be free if he's looking after a child with no means of protecting itself. And you knew this, so understand- understand that he didn't leave because had to, but because he wanted to.”_

* * *

Ging opens the door for his colleagues and son while his grandmother continues setting the table. He can sense Pariston pattering around in his own room, finally awake now that Gon's presence is unmistakably here.

He's not a single bit surprised at how tall he's gotten.

“Ging,” Gon says politely.

“Gon,” Ging nods.

Bisky coughs lightly, and they manage to shuffle in with the least amount of awkwardness they can manage. From the top of the stairs, Pariston watches with his cold, amber eyes.

* * *

_For Pariston Hill, a suicide mission was his favorite kind of mission to go on. Unlike other times, however, he was **actually** planning to actually commit a pretty theatrical suicide. He had plans to have it filmed and filed away on a digital cloud, so that any curious ninny who managed to break into the firewall and comb through his secrets would learn that a) he went in the most dramatic fashion available, b) that all the information was destroyed the minute Pariston's heart and brain both ceased to function, and c) that Pariston did things in style, and that included his own death._

_He was a proponent of the dramatic, the unforgettable. It may have been a tad bit shocking that he planned to die in a land almost entirely devoid of human beings._

“ _You've peaked,” Ging chuckled softly while holding Pariston by the neck, slammed against rich agates._

“ _And now I want to rest,” he'd hummed. He'd actually hummed to the man a foot and a half shorter than him. After spending a year on a submarine together, Pariston had barely let slip two words about what he'd planned to do once they'd stepped foot on uncharted land. Did he seek to destroy it? Exploit it? Do nothing? Ging never figured it out until it was almost too late._

_Pariston always knew that if he sought to disappear into the depths all on his own, the shorter Hunter would rather break his legs than let him disappear. And so, Pariston had let him lead. All the little games that led to Pariston relinquishing control were staged from the start. The curse of the leader was that he was responsible for the collective, not just the individual. Eventually, Ging's attention would've left him, and he'd slip away. As with most of Pariston's plans, that's precisely what happened two years after they'd made land. There was no other way. When a titan-sized Venus Flytrap started eating up members of your party, you tended to forget about the sparkly sociopath._

_To Pariston's credit, he'd made it sixteen days alone before Ging found him. At least by then, the flesh-eating bugs had eaten half of Pariston's left leg and were slowly marching towards his gonads. The irony of it all was that the devouring was almost euphoric. Pariston felt like he was on cloud nine while the tiny creatures fed on his flesh and bones. It had taken him just a few hours to figure out that they'd killed the pain sensors in his body and replaced it with some kind of chemical that induced ecstasy rather than screams. This was all before they even began to feed on his flesh. Had they not made soup of his brain chemistry, he'd have felt them biting into his flesh in the middle of the night. Instead, Pariston woke up one morning with four of his toes gone, bone and all._

“ _I'm tired,” Pariston had said. “I'd like to nap.”_

_But Ging didn't let him sleep. Instead, he strapped Pariston to the beautiful agates, stuffed a torn piece of his headwrap between Pariston's teeth, scraped off the bugs with a hot knife, and then sawed off the burning flesh while Pariston screamed._

* * *

Gon doesn't mean to be so distant, but he's thrumming with an unknown energy. He knows how he gets when he's curious, and right now, he's more interested in what Killua's been up to than what his father has to say about Pariston Hill. His grandmother is used to his flightiness so she merely waves him away with a glass of lychee juice. In less than ten minutes, he has his backpack unpacked, his computer open, and a glass of lychee juice already half finished. He's methodical in that sense. There are steps he needs to take to get to his destination. He knows that if he shirks a step, he'll be pushed to the back, and he can't accept that.

He hasn't seen or searched for Killua since they'd parted ways. Its been seven years, and the few things Gon's heard about him have been from snatches of conversations between strangers. Kurapika and Melody never told him anything because he never asked, and Leorio had always kept the conversation about him and Gon. Gon knows his friends are good people, but he also knows that they guard their own. Gon still doesn't remember much of what happened after he'd made his pact to defeat Neferpitou and before he'd woken up in the hospital, but he knows his friends remember, and they keep it to themselves. Even though Kurapika hadn't been there, even he'd learned, but Gon never did.

And deep down, Gon knows he never will. He knows he'd transformed into a monster who killed, but for Gon, everyone's a bit of a monster inside. His hand twitches when he pictures little Kite, the girl who's living quietly with her colleagues and friends, the girl who's partly his Kite, and partly Colt's little sister. Gon doesn't believe in any gods, but he believes in karma, and he'd given his power, a future with Ging in the Dark Continent, all of it for Kite.

“There's nothing to forgive because I did nothing wrong,” Gon says out loud while the computer boots up. He believes it. Even on the darkest of days, he believes it.

Gon finds that Killua doesn't have social media, but Alluka does. Zushi does too, and so does a stranger with dark brown skin and pale blonde hair. He creates an account on whim and puts a picture of him holding up a v-sign. Then he sends Alluka and Zushi friend requests.

Of course, he's able to bypass the security measures due to the tricks he'd picked up hunting videogames, but just this once, Gon wants to go about this honestly. He goes to the stranger's profile, the only profile on public, and he scrolls through his timeline trying to reason why this man was a suggested friend on both Alluka and Zushi's accounts. The stranger is his age and apparently beads for a living, something Gon knows is a quirky cover for a Hunter. Gon wonders what this person hunts, and why he's posting faceless pictures of Killua.

Killua from behind in a blue tanktop and khaki shorts while the stranger shows off three sets of beaded necklaces, wisps of Killua's hair in a shot of the stranger making a silly face, a box of Killua's favorite chocolates in the background while the stranger picks out beads from a small jar- Killua is everywhere but no where. Not once does Gon see his face. He doesn't have to because Killua will always have the palest skin he's ever seen, paler than Alluka's, someone who'd spent most of her life locked away in a dungeon. For Gon, Killua's shock of white hair pairs with his alabaster skin like red wine does with dark meat.

Gon sees an eerie performance come together. The stranger's camera catches scenic shots with Killua's back turned to the camera. Alluka and Zushi appear in selfies with the stranger, where Killua's pale hand is wrapped around a can of soda, or his shoulder is a headrest for Alluka, or his arm is a tree limb Zushi and Alluka are both doing pushups off of. There's a photo all the way at the bottom, taken three years ago, and it has a long, sculpted arm hanging off the stranger's shoulder. Killua's head isn't in the shot, and it doesn't have to be, because Gon understands.

Alluka and Zushi accept his friend request almost immediately and suddenly, Gon doesn't have to depend on the stranger for Killua anymore. Gon clicks on Alluka's profile and there's already a chat request from her waiting in his mailbox, but Gon sees Killua, sees that seven years has made him bigger, taller, stronger, and Gon finally sees.

Killua has friends, a lover, a new purpose in life, and none of them have anything to do with Gon.

* * *

“ _You're getting married,” Gon said softly._

“ _Married,” Kurapika repeated, thumbing his teacup while Gon took measured sips of his dark beer._

“ _Why?”_

“ _I don't know,” Kurapika said honestly. “I sometimes think it's because she saved my life, but I've saved hers as well. You know I promised to kill her before... and she accepted it.”_

_Gon tapped his chin. “So? She knew your secret. If she said anything, she'd **have** to die.”_

_Kurapika pressed his index finger against the rim of his teacup, letting the steam of the hot tea sting his skin. It was several minutes before the red-eyed man spoke again. “The day the ship went down, all I could think about was Pairo's head in Tserriednich's treasure room... just sitting there next to coffers of gold and emeralds, all alone. I was more concerned about a dead relative than the lives of the people who'd trusted me to protect them. I brought her, Bisky, Hanzo, and so many others into danger, but at the end of the day, all that mattered to me were my cousin's eyes and nothing more.”_

“ _Wasn't she listed as a casualty initially?”_

_Kurapika nodded. “She was in the dungeons when the Kraken tore through the hull.”_

“ _It's not so different than the other times then,” Gon laughed lightly. “They knew you were there for the eyes, and that you'd die before you let them get away again. I'm sure they all understood that when they agreed to help you.” Gon knew he was right because that was him when he was striving towards a goal, whether it was getting his Hunter license, finding Ging, or rescuing Kite. It was all the same to Gon- everything was expendable if it meant getting where you wanted to go, so as long as everyone involved consented to the consequences._

_A young man whispered into his ear, a man Gon hasn't seen in years, a young man who told him that Kite always knew he'd die. Gon crushed that voice and put on a hollow smile._

“ _Does Melody love you?” Gon asked._

“ _I don't know,” Kurapika admitted. “I don't know.”_

* * *

“Gon-kun, how are you?”

Gon turns to the door, knowing full well he'd locked the door before he'd sat down at the computer. “Pariston,” he says blankly at the man sporting a green Hawaiian shirt and khaki shorts.

“It's me! But how are _you,_ Gon-kun? It's been so long, are you still traipsing around with your friends? Where, oh _where_ is that Zoldyck friend of yours? I heard he was coming! Tell me, how have you been!?”

“Leave him alone,” Ging yells from downstairs.

“I'm just trying to get to know my future stepson,” Pariston wails dramatically.

“Come help with the dishes, asshole!” Gon hears Bisky yell next.

Pariston huffs and turns to leave, but not before giving Gon a sharp smile. The creature in Gon twitches at the maddening white teeth, but oddly, his nerves soothe at the sight of the mechanical prosthesis wearing a cheap, straw flat Ging probably bought for him at the local tourist trap. “We'll have to chat eventually,” Pariston coos, bring Gon's attention back to his haunted, amber eyes. “Don't you wanna know why your daddy's all mine now?”

Gon wants to break the rat's neck and toss his lifeless body aside, but little Kite would never forgive him if he killed Ging's groom. Little Kite still loved Ging like a big brother, and like Gon had once fought for Kite, little Kite would put their life on the line for Ging- Ging, who only ever wanted to go to the Dark Continent at the end of the day.

“I'll ask Ging,” Gon tells the Elite Hunter, not because he _actually_ wants to know, but because it's just another mystery of life Gon hopes will unravel so he can finally rest.

* * *

“ _There was a point in your life when all you wanted to do was meet him. You met him, and now he's gone- what next?”_

“ _You're the one in a full-body cast,” Gon pointed out. “How are you gonna finish medical school if you can't move your fingers?”_

“ _Don't change the subject! My brain and mouth are just fine, so I'll still be able to study and take my exams! I'm sure they'll accommodate the body cast... Wait, we're supposed to be talking about you and your dad right now!”_

“ _How did the Kraken take the whole ship but not his voice,” Cheadle murmured under her breath while flipping pages of her book from her own hospital bed._

“ _I saved your life, woman!” Before Leorio could break into another tirade, Gon started feeding his injured friend hospital-issued applesauce while Cheadle laughed underneath her breath._

* * *

It's mid-afternoon when Ging and Gon see each other again. Gon's walking down the stairs as Ging's skinning bitter gourd at the kitchen table.

“The clown's here and he's talking to Mito,” Ging drawls. “Get your toy in line, Biscuit.”

Bisky sneers while pulling on her sweater. “He hasn't tried to kill her, has he?”

“Not yet,” Morel quips from the sink.

“Progress,” Bisky huffs before heading for the door. She throws Gon a short wave before prancing off to find her boyfriend Gon knows will cause trouble the second he walks into the farmhouse.

Morel strategically removes himself from the vicinity while Gon puts his juice glass in the sink and runs warm water through it. Ging keeps his back to him, and Gon thinks about how life would have been if Ging had been around. Would they be living quietly like this? With Ging at the table lost in his thoughts and Gon in own his head?

“I put on a pot of stew,” Ging tells him like they've been eating together for years, because Ging's never _really_ in his own head, he's always here, always alert. “Morel's skinning some chickens outside right now; he'll throw them in once the broth starts to bubble. Do you want to help with dessert?”

Gon remembers that at one point in his life, they looked very much like father and son. He eclipses his father in height now, taller than everyone in his family, but every bit of him looks more like Mito than he does Ging or the birth mother he never knew. He supposes the woman could have been tall and lithe, but he doesn't think so. He knows his great-grandmother's brothers were well over six feet tall and a lanky pair, so Gon doesn't doubt some of the genes passed onto him.

Gon still keeps his hair short and cropped, but now he dresses in sensible shorts in a variety of colors, and wears tanktops and shirts with peculiar designs. His shoes and jacket are as black as Kite's eyes before they became a Chimera Ant's. The only thing setting him apart from all the other sun-kissed natives of Whale Island is the map of Greed Island tattooed into the skin of his ankle. Gon inwardly sighs at the irony of it all.

“Sure,” he says, pretending Ging is Mito.

Ging nods. “We're getting berries. I'm gonna make a pie.” Ging chops up the bitter gourd into thin slices before bringing the board and knife to the bubbling pot and sliding the contents into the broth with his blade. Hands at the tap, some soap, a towel, and then Ging's putting on his own cheap sandals and shuffling out the door, expecting Gon to follow.

And just like when he'd been eleven, Gon follows.

* * *

_Their lovestory had began in Hell, on a land larger than either had ever been on, flanked by zero friends and cold, cold darkness. But maybe it had started earlier- maybe Ging always knew that his heart would go to the cruelest one in the room, the one who didn't care one bit about him. Death crouched in every corner, and deep down, Ging always wanted nothing more than to sleep away his headache, to dig himself a hole in the ground and lie beneath the loose dirt until the throbbing went away._

_Pariston looked nothing like her, didn't have an ounce of her aggressive nature, nor her thin smile that often cut Ging deeper than any knife. She'd gone to prison a year after Gon's birth, and remained there. There wasn't anywhere to hide when you picked victims for fun. Sooner or later, somebody caught on, and when they finally did, Ging took his son and he ran. Her laughter followed him for a year afterwards, and when the judges finally closed their books on her, Ging finally went home. He went home and lost his son to his cousin._

_But Mito was a kind human being, not like the woman with pale blue eyes, and long, spidery limbs. When Mito fought for Gon, Ging gave in. It was an honorable loss in the end, penance for loving a monster who was still rotting in prison._

_Mya had never been a hunter, but she'd hunted Ging- a normal, capable human being had hunted him to the ends of the earth with nothing but her brain and her mouth. With no nen and all the connections in the world, she'd found him and his son over and over again for the first year she was in prison, and only stopped after Ging went to Netero for help. Then there was nothing, because Netero took her tongue. He took her tongue, and Ging could finally go to sleep knowing Gon was safe, and that he was free._

_His and Pariston's lovestory began in Hell, but maybe Ging had always been in Hell. Children did childish things, and as a child, he'd fallen in love with a creature masquerading as an adventurous girl. Maybe Ging deserved what he got, the beatings, the knife at his throat when Gon was a week old, the promise that she'd always be there for them, the killings, the guilt, the moment when the police raided their home and took her away screaming while Ging held their son in his arms whilst crouching on the upper left corner of their bathroom, waiting for them all to leave so he could escape, so Gon could **live,** so Ging could repent-_

“ _Promise me,” Pariston murmured softly to no one, his breathing coming in low, scratching wheezes. “Promise you'll let me die.”_

“ _Can't promise that,” Ging chuckled, thinking about all the promises he's broken over his short lifespan. The only thing he really **could** promise was a good time, but a good time rarely mattered if it wasn't with the person you wanted there with you. He wondered if she really had any fun **with** him, or if he was always her toy._

“ _But it **hurts** ,” Pariston implored, but Ging merely wiped the sweat from the blonde's burning brow before placing another wet cloth on his forehead. The fever thrummed and the darkness crept closer, but Ging was alive and he'd kept Pariston alive too. A long time ago, he'd sat with Mya and sang her fever away, but he sang for no one now, and he wouldn't sing for Pariston._

“ _Hate you,” Pariston whispered one last time before drifting off into a fitful sleep._

_Ging began to sing, because he couldn't keep his promises, not ever. The first few words were rough, because they weren't his. He didn't make promises often, but he'd make one now, just this one time because the rest of the party was dead, and it was only him and Pariston in Hell now. He **thought** he could go about it alone, but he thought he could leave Mya on his own accord too, and he'd been wrong, so wrong that he ended up on the run with their child, on the run from a woman who had no qualms with singing to crowds in the evening, fighting those same crowds in the pits at night, and then snapping necks at the wee hours of the morning because it was more fun that way._

_Ging didn't make promises often, but this time, **just** this one time while they were in Hell and Pariston was burning from a fever Ging had caused after sawing off his leg, he promised Pariston something._

“ _I'll walk with you forever,” he said after he finished singing his song. “Make it out of here alive with me, and I promise I'll be with you forever.”_

“ _Forever?” Pariston asked softly from underneath the blankest, his eyes closed to the world around him._

“ _Forever,” Ging promised, and for the second time in his life, he meant it._

* * *

“The red or the blue?” Gon asks.

“Blue for the pie, red for the wine.”

“Do we have time to make wine right now?”

Ging chuckles, ruffling his son's hair, his grown son who he hasn't seen or talked to in almost ten years, his flesh and blood. “Red for after the food's done and there's only wine left. A little fruit never hurt anyone.”

Gon gives him a hesitant look before shrugging. He picks the berries and separates the two colors with clump of edible leaves off the red berry's bush. Ging picks some too, but mostly, he stares at the son he didn't think he'd ever have. Seven years, and Gon looks like he could be Mito's, and for that, Ging is thankful.

“Ging, why are you marrying Pariston?” Gon asks him plainly while gently picking blueberries off their bush.

“Because I love him,” Ging tells him honestly.

“Is that really the answer to everything? Kurapika didn't know why he was marrying Melody, but he married her anyway.”

Ging clears his throat before continuing. “I'm sure they have their own definition of 'love' figured out.” Gon goes silent for a few seconds and Ging takes the opportunity to take a seat on the grass and soak in the sun.

“Are you sure you're not confusing love with loneliness?” Gon asks him while continuing to pick the berries and placing them into Mito's basket. “Does it really count when you were so far away from everyone?”

“Why not a bit of everything?” Ging laughs out loud. He blinks away the tears that spring in his eyes.

Somehow, luck's always on Ging's side. He'd survived running off before hitting puberty, lived through one abusive relationship, managed to get his one child to safety before being run off by his own cousin, didn't catch any STDs with his string of casuals, and then fell in love with another known sociopath in a Hell he'd willingly gone to live in. He'd planned to end his career in the Dark Continent. He'd told Mito, and only Mito before he'd left, told her that he planned to live and die in a land that wasn't even settled by humans, and that he didn't care if anyone else knew because he was just a myth anyway, no one cared about the real Ging Freecss. He'd passed on the last of his fatherly duties to his cousin, and she'd taken them. When she turned away without saying goodbye, Ging smiled, because at least Mito would remember him for him, for the sleazy, ungrateful bastard that he really was and not the legend the Hunters had created.

Pariston had gone there for the same reason, and yet, Ging couldn't see him die. Ging could see himself, Mya, Gon, and the whole world wither away to dust, but to see another human being choose their final resting place as the _same_ place Ging had chosen? Ging couldn't handle that kind of audacity.

There was nothing righteous about leaving Mya in the end, only the aura of finality. He knew she was killing even as he lie in bed with her, even before they created their child, even before he fell in love. But he'd stayed, and so he learned the hard way that even the sweetest songs could be poison.

And so he hunted. He hunted for Pariston out of vengeance, out of hatred, reminding himself that no one crossed him, not even the woman he once loved, the one he sold out to the police and then had silenced.

Ging lets the gentle breeze and sun envelop him. “Sometimes, love is all the little things that keep you sane.”

“Pariston keeps you sane?”

“He keeps me on my toes,” Ging summarizes. Ging hunted him to punish him, but found him dying instead. “And that's enough for me. Sit down, Gon. Let me tell you a story.”

“About?”

Ging thinks about the few precious hours they have left before the stew is finished and one of the guests come looking for them, only to find them on the border between the forest and the house, lounging with berries and the sun and all the stories that led them to this moment.

“How about the adventures I didn't like?”

Gon sits down next to him and places the basket between them. “There's never a bad adventure.”

“There's always a bad adventure,” he tells his son, the only one he's never spoken truthfully to, the one who doesn't hate or love him. “How about when I first came to Yorknew and met a girl? She had the bluest eyes I'd ever seen.”

Gon cocks his head to the side and and asks, “blue eyes?”

Ging nods. “Blue eyes, and she sang like the sea.”

And so Ging tells his story.

* * *

“ _Gon?”_

“ _Hmm?”_

“ _Killua's here. He'll only be here for a few days, but maybe you two can talk again. It has been a while, hasn't it?”_

“ _Has it?” Gon asked inquisitively._

“ _Four years,” Palm told him._

“ _... nah. I'll see him when I see him. We're still friends, remember? We're just on different adventures right now. Don't worry, Palm. I'll see him when he's ready to go on another adventure me **.** It's nothing to be worried about. It all comes together in the end.” He held out his pinky finger and waited until the woman linked hers with his. “I promise you, we'll all be friends no matter what.”_

“ _No matter what?”_

“ _No matter what.”_

_They shook on it and then went to join Ikalgo and Meleoron at the restaurant where the music floated with the wind and good food made its way around the table. Gon and his friends enjoyed their food and their time, and somewhere along the way, Gon let go._

* * *

“Let me tell you about mine,” Gon tells his father after he's gone quiet. By now, the sun's dipped, and dinner is long over. Their berries are mostly eaten, a special dinner underneath a blanket of stars. Gon's eyes twinkle because even if he doesn't love or hate Ging, he loves Killua, his best friend, the man he'd see again tomorrow. “It's about two boys who became friends instantly. It's about how they went on a whole bunch of adventures together before going home. Unfortunately, home wasn't the same place, but they knew they'd see each other again.”

“Oh?”

“Mmhmm. They promised, and at the end of the day, that's all that really matters, doesn't it?”

Ging smiles, and it's not that self-loathing smile Gon is so familiar with. No, it's something deeper, something raw. Gon finds that the smile suits Ging, like the color red on a white piece of paper.

“Tell me.”

And Gon does.

* * *

“ _It's a part of growing up,” Kurapika told him one sunny afternoon a month after he'd gotten married. “Not the marrying part- the learning to live with your sins part. She reminds me of my sins. I get to count them in my head every morning I wake up next to her, and it makes me feel... human. I've never felt ashamed of killing to avenge my tribe, but I committed cardinal sins to get to my destination. And the doubt... I wondered if I'd ever find all the eyes. After having come so far, I couldn't perish without retrieving them all, and that ate something inside of me. Being with her reminds me that I found my family in the end, and that I had to kill to get them back, and that... that was OK. What I did in the end was justified, and even though she never approved of it, she let me be. That's why I love her, Gon- because she let me be.”_

* * *

Gon doesn't walk Ging down the aisle. They're not friends, not yet, at least. He's just another one of Ging's family members, and Gon is comfortable with that.

Friends of Ging's who roam the same historical forums as he does walk Ging down the aisle. His party consists of his friends, teachers, little Kite, and all the ther Hunters and non-Hunters he'd come across on his adventures. The town's little ceremony hall is filled to the ceiling with outsiders, all attempting to sneak a peek at the unholy union between two of the most problematic Elite Hunters in their line of business.

And yet, the first row on the left is for the owners of the house on the hill overlooking the sea. Mito, Gon, and Gon's great-grandmother stand patiently with the rest of the crowd as Ging tries to fit the too-small gold band over his groom's finger.

“Did you get the ring fitted?” Pariston asks him, signature smile plastered on his face while his killing intent vibrates through the community hall that's now a wedding venue.

“Uh...no?”

“Fucking idiot,” Bisky says loudly enough that the guests hanging off the rafters flinch.

“Mito, we should go,” Gon tells his aunt pleasantly.

“After the blonde man tries killing him,” she replies equally pleasant.

And Pariston does, of course, but that's at the reception when no one's paying attention while Ging chokes on his poisoned keylime pie. Oddly, it's Hisoka who ends up having an antidote in his shoe.

* * *

“I can't believe that clown has a pocket in his shoe,” Killua laughs out loud. “Can you believe that?”

“I didn't even know those were shoes,” Gon answers dazed, but merry. “They looked like socks!”

“And Miss. Cheadle's pipettes,” laughs the stranger whose name is Miru, “I can't believe she carries them in a _catpurse._ The betrayal!”

“I thought the purse was cute,” Alluka whines. “Zushi, wasn't the purse cute!?”

“I liked the shoe better!” Zushi counters. “The purse was OK, but when Hisoka-san whipped the antidote out of his _shoe?_ That was the best part! Who even does that!?”

“I have pockets in my hat,” Ikalgo offers.

“Custom-made pockets for me,” Meleoron says smoothly.

“I stitch pockets into my dresses now,” Palm adds.

“Pocket fetishists, the lot of you,” Killua grumbles and they all laugh, and Miru lovingly slaps Killua's arm while he huffs and puffs, and Zushi proclaims his love for Hisoka's choice in sensible shoewear, and Killua finally gives into the laughter, and Killua's shaking with mirth, and Killua looks nothing like his father, _is_ nothing like his father.

Gon's eyes glaze over over with tears, but he blinks them away before they can make their way into his champagne glass.

“Gon-kun!” Alluka shouts suddenly. “You should come with us on our trip to The Doldrums! It's an old mining site north of Yorknew!”

“Might as well make a party out of it,” Killua nods. “How about it, Gon? It's been a while since we've traveled together. You up for taking a break from your work?”

“Yeah.” It comes as easily as the wind. This moment, underneath the stars overlooking Whale Island, circled around a small fire and drinking the same champagne as his friends- it finally comes easily.

“Yay, party!” Alluka shouts merrily, and pops open another bottle. Little Kite and Colt drift over to the commotion, and soon, Kurapika and Melody follow, with Leorio and his old medical school friends trailing in behind them with their boombox and Morel's imported wine.

From the corner of his eye, Gon sees Ging and Pariston walk into the forest hand-in-hand. Oddly, he's at ease. The rat, despite being a rat, is his father's responsibility now, and Gon has to give him credit for that.

“Remember that you have to own every one of your choices,” Gon murmurs softly, reciting Ging's words to his friends who've long since lost their attention span to the flow of alcohol.

“For the ones you choose to kill- and the ones you choose to save,” Gon finishes for the wind.

And so the chicken finally roosts.

* * *

“Happy wedding day, darling,” Pariston hums, pulling at the rough strands of Ging's beard.

“Happy wedding day, asshole, thanks for making me throw up on my grandmother.”

Pariston kisses his cheek before hugging his chest. “You're welcome.”

“Hmm.”

Ging eyes the stars in the sky and soaks in the warmth from the body clasping onto him for dear life, and thinks that _maybe_ \- maybe he can live with this.

**End**

 


End file.
